Put a Moratorium on Death Sentences Until Problems With the System are Fixed

It's hard to believe that so many people support the death penalty when it's been shown to have flaws that have led directly to the deaths of innocent people at the hands of states that were sworn to protect them.

States often fall short on the mark; critical mistakes are made, people go to jail or are sentenced to death and it takes private organizations to do DNA testing to show that a person did not commit a crime (which EVERY death-penalty state should be doing ON IT'S OWN, no matter how much it costs.)

A jury convicts a person of a crime based on how the case is presented by both sides, testimony by eyewitnesses, evidence collected at the crime scene, testimony from the accused, and the maneuvers carried out by the attorneys in court.

But what happens when the evidence is circumstantial, the eyewitnesses identify the wrong person, evidence is supressed from the jury, or the defense attorney shows up to trial hung over or unprepared? Or attorneys put their clients on the stand and the other side is able to make the accused look REALLY bad to the jury through no fault of their own? The jury convicts the person based on the performances of the players and who does a better job of explaining how the evidence shows one thing or another.

THEN the state refuses to review the case and death row inmates are allowed to languish on death row for years, even though they are there because their attorney was outperformed in court and failed to sway jurors who have to judge what is presented to them and nothing else. Evidence is destroyed after a while, and then there is no opportunity to do DNA testing. Virginia's governor recently commuted the death sentence of a prisoner precisely because this happened.

A death penalty system that makes mistakes and refuses to go back to test itself is immoral. We should do everything we should to punish the guilty and set the innocent free. If this means putting a moratorium on all executions indefinitely until the problems are fixed, then it should be done. And states have no business adding to death row until these problems are fixed either.

One last thing--the case against Tookie Williams, plus his violent assaults on prison guards and other prisoners over the years showed that he belonged in prison. He's no innocent man, but I don't think anything positive will come from his scheduled execution in a few short hours.